This action research compilation contains two research projects: "Increasing Student Appreciation of Poetry through the Use of Contemporary Music" by Paul G. Senjem and "Are Men and Women Created Equal? Gender in the Classroom" by Jennifer Joyce Plitzuweit. The researcher/author of the first paper states that his goal was to make exposure to poetry more pleasant for his 78 high school sophomore students by including contemporary music in the poetry unit plan. The paper explains that as part of a 3-week unit he set up a data collection process before and after the poetry unit; the data collection tool was a pre- and post-form. It states that after data collection responses were tabulated and converted into a mean, mode, and median. Includes data; contains 9 references. The researcher/author of the second paper divided her two eighth-grade classes by gender for three quarters of the school year (16 consistent female participants and 20 consistent male participants) to see if this would affect learning. According to the paper, she journaled about similarities and differences and documented grade increases and decreases. The paper's researcher/author feels that it was worth splitting the classes by gender and that the students were more successful academically. Contains a 6-item bibliography and attached data. (NKA)